I’m pleased to announce that Azure Immutable Blob Storage is now in public preview – enabling financial institutions to store and retain data in a non-erasable and non-rewritable format – and at no additional cost. Azure Immutable Blob Storage meets the relevant storage requirements of three key financial industry regulations: the CFTC Rule 1.31(c)-(d), FINRA Rule 4511, and SEC Rule 17a-4. Financial services customers, representing one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, are subject to complex requirements like the retention of financial transactions and related communication in a non-erasable and non-modifiable state. These strict requirements help to provide effective legal and forensic surveillance of market conduct.

Software providers and partners can now rely on Azure as a one-stop shop cloud solution for records retention and immutable storage with sensitive workloads. Financial institutions can now easily build their own applications taking advantage of these features while remaining compliant. These Write Once Read Many (WORM) policies apply to all tiers of storage (hot, cool, and archive). This industry leading compliance storage offering is now available at no additional cost on top of the base pricing of Azure storage!

To document compliance, Microsoft retained a leading independent assessment firm that specializes in records management and information governance, Cohasset Associates, to evaluate Azure Immutable Blob Storage and its compliance with requirements specific to the financial services industry. Cohasset validated that Azure Immutable Blob Storage, when used to retain time-based Blobs in a WORM state, meets the relevant storage requirements of CFTC Rule 1.31(c)-(d), FINRA Rule 4511, and SEC Rule 17a-4. Microsoft targeted this set of rules, as they represent the most prescriptive guidance globally for records retention for financial institutions. We are pleased to announce the release of Cohasset’s assessment of our immutable storage feature set, available today.

For customers seeking to decommission legacy SAN and other storage infrastructure, as well as take advantage of the economies of scale available in the cloud, Azure Immutable Blob Storage offers the perfect feature set:

Data can be rendered immutable and cannot be modified or deleted by any user including those with account administrative privileges.

Administrators can configure policies where data can be created and read, but not updated or deleted – otherwise known as WORM storage.

The same Azure storage environment can be used for both standard and immutable storage. This means IT no longer needs to manage the complexity of a separate archive storage solution.

Integration with archive, cool, and hot tiers of storage – allowing it to be used with data accessed frequently or infrequently. Discounts apply to storage accessed infrequently, either in cool standby or fully archived.

Administrators can create lifecycle management policies to dictate rules for when data automatically moves between tiers. For example, data that has not been modified for two months moves to archive storage.

This feature set is a result of Microsoft learning and partnering with a broad set of stakeholders across the financial services industry ecosystem. Azure is in a unique position to partner with banking and capital markets customers, given our global leadership in engaging with regulators, the industry leading audit rights we provide to customers, and our exclusive cloud compliance program. Microsoft also has a unique portfolio of financial services compliance offerings built into our products:

The Service Trust Portal provides full unredacted audit reports for the Azure platform, including PCI DSS, SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO 27001. It also includes compliance guides for implementing solutions on Azure subject to financial services regulations.

Compliance Manager provides a cross-cloud view of control state, organized by Microsoft managed controls and institution managed controls. It includes workflow, allowing a compliance officer to assign control implementation or testing processes to any user through Azure Active Directory. These features were built in collaboration with leading financial institutions and regulators.

Azure Security Center provides deeper visibility into the security threats facing your environment and makes those insights actionable with a few clicks.

This set of resources and features makes Azure the best destination for moving financial data into the cloud and helping ensure it meets the strict regulatory requirements imposed on the financial services industry. Get started today! For the full story of how Azure can help banks and insurers meet their regulatory responsibilities, visit The Microsoft Trust Center. Lastly, see our case studies for how customers are using Azure.